Unitarian Universalist
Meeting of
“Oh Glorious
Day!”
and
Pastoral Prayer
Rev. Kathy Duhon
Each
Easter I follow the ancient Christian tradition of beginning this sermon with
humor, for today is a day of Joy. But
instead of the usual joke this year, I want to tell you a couple of Patch Adams
stories.
As
you probably have heard, Patch Adams is the well-known doctor who is also a
clown, who promotes the belief that humor is healing. And not just jokes, but zany antics of all
kinds. Once he dressed up in a white
robe with angel’s wings and went into a depressed patient’s room and
proclaimed, “Coming attractions!”
To
his own mother, who had a below-the-knee amputation as a result of her diabetes,
he greeted her in the recovery room with, “Well mum, how does it feel to have
one leg in the grave?” Patch said, “She
laughed out loud. Till the day she died, she told that story to her friends and
each time, she laughed again.”
On
this glorious day, we are invited to laugh out loud at the remarkable stories,
the marvelous resurrected hope of a people of faith. They had been to the depths of despair,
experienced the awful tragedy of the crucifixion, and rose to be the Christian
Church.
Easter
does not happen or make sense without the events of Holy Week, the pain and
suffering, the denial and betrayal of friends, the public humiliation and
abandonment by followers, the desolation of death. And something else – love. Intertwined throughout the story of the last
days of Jesus are wonderful glimpses of a powerful love.
At
the Last Supper, he washes the feet of his disciples, down on his knees, with a
towel around his waist. They protest
this humbling gesture, at least Peter does, but Jesus tells them that this is
an example. That if he, their teacher
and leader, could wash their feet, then they should go and wash the feet of
others. They were to be servants.
Jesus
tells the disciples that one among them will deny him, and Peter, that great
leader of the disciples, does just that on the night when Jesus is handed over
to the authorities. “I do not know the
man,” Peter says with a curse, late in the night. Three times he denies to other bystanders any
connection to the condemned man, Jesus.
And although Jesus has predicted this weak-kneed, lily-livered behavior,
he stays in table fellowship and friendship with Peter to the end, knowing that
Peter’s actions are understandable and accepted.
Jesus
goes to pray in the garden with three disciples, who are so scattered in the
spirit that they cannot stay awake, but Jesus continues to awaken them, to keep
them with him. Jesus knows that one of
his closest followers will betray him, but that fellow, Judas Iscariot,
continues to be one of the twelve disciples until the end, not cast out for his
complicity in the coming arrest. Jesus’
last words to Judas are to call him “friend”.
In
the garden, and on the cross, the followers remember that Jesus was fumbling in
the spirit himself, feeling abandoned, not wanting to suffer, questioning this whole sacrifice he was called to make. And from the cross you have Jesus’ famous
words of forgiveness, “Father forgive them; for they
do not know what they are doing.”
So,
during the events of the few days leading up to his crucifixion, we find that Jesus
displays deep honesty, real vulnerability, radical acceptance, beloved
belonging, and blessed forgiveness. His
love for his followers and for himself and for those who oppose him is clear
and deep. Even his love for God, by whom
Jesus feels abandoned, is centered at the end in his final words, “Abba, into
your hands I commend my spirit.”
In
the last day of Jesus’ earthly life, he is tortured, humiliated, mocked, and
killed. His followers have experienced
the worst. I know people who have gone
through, or are going through the worst – those deep losses and sufferings,
sometimes coming in multitude, or else, one right after the other. I have noticed that when someone has gone
through unspeakable pain, but while accompanied by love, they come to a place
of deep wisdom, a place of acceptance, for they know
that they can survive the worst. If you
have not been through the worst, you do not know that you can endure it. And if you have been through the worst and
survived it while accompanied by love, your level of fear is greatly reduced,
if not eliminated, at least temporarily.
As a later writing in the Christian scriptures proclaims, “There is no
fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear….”
Life,
death, suffering, fear, rebirth, love, hope and joy are all intimately
interconnected. A poem from Julia
Esquivel says this beautifully:
I live each day to kill
death;
I die each day to beget life,
and
in this dying unto death,
I die a thousand times
and
am
reborn another thousand
through
that love.
The
disciples were disheartened and afraid at first, cowering in an upper room,
undoubtedly worried for their own lives because of their association with the
crucified Jesus. The versions of the
gospels differ about what happened on Easter morning, but it seems most likely that
a woman or women go to the tomb to anoint the body and find the tomb open and
empty and see a dazzling appearance of one or two men or angels. And then they run, “with fear and great joy”,
it says, to tell the disciples. And then
Peter runs to the tomb, and is amazed. I
have to admit that the images of the women and Peter, and possibly other
disciples, running about in joy and amazement makes me want to laugh. They have been through the worst and they are
now bumbling and babbling and glorying in the joy of the amazing defeat they
feel of death and fear.
Oh
Glorious Day! When dazzling things
happen and hope is reborn. Oh Glorious
Day! When love triumphs over fear, and
amazement outruns seriousness. Oh Glorious
Day! When the
suffering of the worst that can happen is trounced upon by the experience of
ultimate joy.
When the great 20th
century theologian, Jürgen Moltmann,
wrote about Easter faith, he said, “resurrection means
rebirth out of impotence and indolence to ‘the living hope.’ And today ‘living hope’ means a passion for
life, and a lived protest against death.”…The resurrection hope finds living
expression in men and women when they protest against death and the slaves of
death….It lives from joy in the coming victory of life.”
May this glorious day bring us the joy that comes from knowing the ultimate victory of life lived with love. Alleluia! Amen.
Pastoral Prayer
Holy Spirit, whose divine presence resounds everywhere in the interdependent web of all existence, especially in the eternal re-birth of life and the springtime return of light, bless our spirits as we gather here today. May we be grounded in Faith, enlivened by Hope, and sustained with Love.
Beloved, it has been a difficult winter for many in this community who have faced many losses and challenges, who have suffered, who still suffer. May their lives be made whole, hale and free. We are grateful to travel this journey together in a community of caring and compassion – open our hearts and hands even wider, that we may embrace here the Beloved Belonging.
O Wisdom, our comfort can never be complete while those beyond our community live in misery, enduring warfare in their neighborhoods, knowing bitter poverty in their families, and suffering oppression of many kinds. We pray for peace and justice for all our brothers and sisters. May Meaningful Peace reach out from our spirits and minds and be a soothing balm to a broken world in need.
Source of Joy, we follow you in all thy ways of goodness. On this glorious day, may renewal be born in all our lives. May our spirits be raised up in Transforming Joy. Alleluia, alleluia!